Despite having more data available than ever before, the higher education sector has struggled to defend itself against criticisms about value for money
I never thought that the phrase 'known unknowns' would ever come to mean anything. But, as we launch ourselves into 2018, I am beginning to think that it's a very useful watchword for those of us struggling to make sense of what's happening in higher education in the UK.
For a while it looked as if data would be our salvation. It would spot trends, lead proactive support, reward us with Silver (if not Gold) and generally help us do our jobs better.
However, those who have worked close to the coalface, mining and gathering data, knew that it was often crafted to produce the result we wanted, or were told we wanted. I guess it was inevitable that the bigger the prize, the greater the pressure to curate data with a certain result in mind.
In their infancy, data-gathering exercises such as the National Student Survey (NSS), Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) and statistical returns to government were reasonably innocent. Their results were often a wake-up call to different parts of the institution. Heads would roll and investments would be made and we would carry on.
However, in the last decade things have changed greatly. These exercises gradually started to become something greater than the sum of their parts.
The replacement of DLHE with Graduate Outcomes means that much now depends on staying in touch with graduates for at least two years
When elements of NSS and DLHE, spending on estate, staff to student ratios, and the number of Firsts and 2:1s were combined into league tables, an institution's position in these tables became symbolic of something more than simple measurements.
And now we come to the irony of it all.
We are collecting more data than ever before - data that is increasingly being created by individual students through their interactions with pieces of edtech (such as VLEs, digital textbook platforms, attendance monitoring systems), or as they are asked to express an opinion via surveys.
The replacement of DLHE with Graduate Outcomes means that much now depends on staying in touch with graduates for at least two years after they have graduated.
Given that many universities struggle to maintain accurate records of their current students, this is not only a major data challenge but also forces us to enter long-term post-graduation relationships with students - many of whom will need a very good reason to stay in touch with us for even a day after graduation.
The attacks on universities that have been mounted by the press and the government, from practically the minute that the results of the last general election were announced, centre on the same type of measurements - what I call 'the meaningless yardstick'.
You would have thought that attacks based on measurements such as value for money would be meat and drink for the academic world to fend off with the increased amount of data now in their possession. But you would be wrong.
Value for money is a perception. Relating it to tuition fees does not make any sense as there is no common yardstick of judgement that all students can use. Relating it to the cost of accommodation or books or photocopying is something that would and does yield interesting results. Yet we never hear from politicians about the latter.
TEF has now become so battered that we should expect the DfE to throw in a rather blood-spattered towel and announce its retirement
The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) has now become so battered by the speed of the change in the politics surrounding HE policy, that we should expect the Department for Education (DfE) to throw in a rather blood-spattered towel and announce its retirement on the grounds of a technical knockout.
TEF may reappear if the subject-specific pilots are deemed viable, but at a more granular level. Even then it could very well be rendered insignificant if the much anticipated major review of HE funding comes out in favour of differential course-based fees.
I suspect that it's simply too soon for subject-level TEF to become a factor in the calculation of course fee differentials.
The same cannot be said for Graduate Outcomes and Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO). These fit perfectly into the language of value for money and students finding the 'graduate premium' when they step into the world of work.
Analysis of the first tranche of LEO data seems to show that teaching excellence as measured by TEF has little to do with getting a high salary. Just ask graduates of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Of course, such conclusions are statistical nonsense. LEO data is at least three years old and is not based on the same student cohort that contributes to TEF data. LEO misses whole groups and is not designed to be a single league table.
In the clamour of the moment, in the desire of both major political parties to win the young person's vote, in the world of the meaningless yardstick such details are not capable of stopping what could be the most simplistic and reductionist reason for going to university becoming a major driver of the future structure of HE in this country.
If, as seems likely, the forthcoming major review ties tuition fees to measurements of employment, possibly years after graduation, then those working to support employability, career choice and even transferable skills will be front and centre in this brave new world of known unknowns.
Good luck with that.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of HECSU/Prospects
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